Lilianna Oustinovskaya: Pelosi’s top donors are labor unions and friends

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has relied on labor unions and friends for most of her campaign funding since she first ran for Congress in 1987, according to a report released last week.

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, released the fourth report in its Who Bankrolls Congress?series. The report complied data from CQ MoneyLine records over the course of Pelosi’s political career, examining the top 10 political action committees that have donated to her campaign, in addition to the top five individual donors.

The Center’s Josh Israel and Aaron Mehta poured through the documents dating back to Pelosi’s first federal race, a special election to replace the late Rep. Sala Burton, to the present day. The investigation took months as the reporters worked to identify similarly spelled names of individuals and PACs in order to gain a more accurate amount of how much was donated.

Their findings: Labor unions make up eight of the top 10 PACs that donated to her campaigns. Pelosi had established herself a staunch supporter of labor unions from the beginning of her career and they in turn have become her biggest donors over the years.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters takes the number one spot with $142,350 in donations. The National Association of Realtors, the United Auto Workers, and the Air Line Pilots Association are also among the top 10. JP Morgan Chase, the giant bank, is also in the group.

All five of Pelosi’s top individual donors have personal relationships with the Speaker. Her top contributor is San Francisco trial lawyer John W. Keker, who has donated $58,800. His wife, Christina Day Keker, a graphic designer who owns her own company, is the No. 2 donor, with $53,800. The top five is rounded out by a land developer, a savings and loan magnate and the granddaughter of IBM’s founder.

The report noted that “the top five individuals alone contributed more than $240,000 to Pelosi’s committees, about 2.3 percent of her overall individual total.”

Lilianna Oustinovskaya is an intern in the Chronicle’s Washington Bureau. E-mail her at lilianna@hearstdc.com.